The Invisible Hand News

Hello and happy new year to our beloved shareholders. With the coming year, our primary goal is to reach new heights, for a successful 2021. And as we all know, a pillar of success is buying yachts and doing frivolous things on them, another key goal for 2021.

Ignorance is blissful but information is power
Far removed from the physical and mental concerns of the lower class, our moneyed friends occasionally gather in swell environments to network and discuss the matters of the masters, while consuming recreational substances. We wanted to integrate a representation of this fascinating ritual of sociological interest. But don’t think it’s all fun and games. Important information is shared and secret deals are made in those places.

When nothing goes right, go left.

Funneling what’s trickling down
Capitalism has a tendency to favor those who are already established. Once you are rich enough, we’ll let you access a *re-distributive* feature of modern finance: dividends. You give money to a company, and they regularly give you a little less money in return. If you maintain your positions well, after some time, you’ll be out of work but you’ll still get paid just because you own those pieces of privatized power we call shares. This is trickle-down economics. You just have to make sure it stops trickling down at your level.

If you made a cent for every manufactured bullet, well that’d just be bad cause war is not cool.

See you next month!

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Howdy! We’re back here this month to humbly share our advancement with you, our precious shareholders.

Here’s a detailed infographic of how things are going:


As you can see, things are going great. Someone with big influence said one day, “Network Marketing is the wave of the future”.

Last month we went hard on implementing content to make the game playable from start to finish. We’re almost there, and right now the balancing is so off it’s actually funny to watch the market behave in a way we, the actual developers of the game, didn’t anticipate. Fortunately our advanced computer experience will make it easy for us to refine this into a well-paced and satisfying experience, up to industry standards, by orienting the odds in your favour. We value our shared interests.

You will experience relatively normal things in the game

We’re having fun implementing physically impossible character spawning to keep you on edge. Have you ever been scared by a coworker tapping on your shoulder while you’re focused on some important work stuff? We’re working on including it. Life in the office has its ups and downs, but we’re working on narrative beats and systems so it’s more ups than downs!

Is going out of the office really going to be a good time?

See you next month!

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Our publisher, Fellow Traveller is an indie games label publishing innovative story-driven games. Their newest game, Suzerain is out today!

Suzerain is a text based, political strategy game, where you play as the newly elected President of Sordland, following 20 year dictatorship. It’s 1954 and it’s your job to lead the country into an uncertain future.

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Navigate your first term through conversations with your cabinet members, colleagues and family. It’s up to you to decide who you will trust, what you will sacrifice and where your priorities lie.

Will you reform the constitution, transforming the Republic into a brutal dictatorship or true democracy? Align yourself with the capitalist of communist superpowers? Prepare for potential military threats on the horizon? Address racial minorities, women’s rights, the ongoing recession, immigration and all the other challenges and opportunities presented to a world leader.



If you love narrative games as much as we do, check out Suzerain on Steam!

Hi there! Welcome to our first monthly developer update, known as the Board Update, to let you know how things are progressing on The Invisible Hand.

For the past few months we've been working on content production, blending market mechanics and narration with the help of our masterfully crafted master script by Will O'Neill and music composed by Felix Watson.

This is complex work as we're giving players a lot of freedom to act in opposition to the narrative, and want them to feel seen, while not going down too many narrative branches before our endings. We're achieving this by creating small branches that are quickly resolved and put back on track of the main branch, storing information about players' choices that affect the ending.

People can get angry if you don't do what you're told

In October, we worked on polish and bug fixes as development was slowed down due to health issues of our main developer, Ben. A round of playtest organized by one of our producers, Louis, brought a ton of good ideas. We decided to slow down the rhythm of the game a bit by making in-game days a bit longer. This is more work than it sounds like, as we had to rework timing for events in a lot of places. We’ve been reluctant to do this in the past because we liked having players feel pressured by time, but it was getting in the way of understanding and enjoying mechanics for a lot of players, so we caved to the lobbying.

Thanks for tuning into this Board Report, we appreciate the ongoing confidence and support of our cherished shareholders, and we assure you that together, we’ll make more money than you can imagine. See you next month!

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A little story beat we are working on...

Our publisher, Fellow Traveller is an indie games label publishing innovative story-driven games. Their newest game, Paradise Killer launches today!

Paradise Killer is an open world, murder mystery. Welcome to a whodunit tale where you get to decide who did the deed—you just have to PROVE it.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

On the eve of rebirthing a new Paradise Island, the Council of leaders is murdered and Paradise is killed. This is the crime to end all crimes.

You play as Lady Love Dies, an “investigation freak” who is summoned from exile to decide who the murderer is. Search for clues and find the evidence needed to accuse whoever you find guilty. Multiple suspects means multiple possible outcomes based on the evidence you discover and the choices you make.

What are the facts? What are the truths? Are they the same?

Who killed Paradise?

If you love narrative games as much as we do, check out Paradise Killer on Steam!